d Nasmyth, "I'm going to try. If they won't hear reason,
I'll start a syndicate round the settlement."

Wheeler, leaning forward, dropped a hand on his shoulder. "Count on me
for a thousand dollars when you want the money." He turned and looked
at Gordon. "It's your call."

"I'll raise the same amount," said Gordon, "though I'll have to put a
mortgage on the ranch."

Mattawa made a little diffident gesture. "A hundred--it's the most I
can do--but there's the boy," he said.

Nasmyth smiled in a curious way, for he knew this offer was, after
all, a much more liberal one than those the others had made.

"You," he said severely, "will be on wages. Yet, if we put the thing
through, you will certainly get your share."

He looked round at the other two, and after they had expressed their
approval, they discussed the project until far into the night, and
finally decided to recross the range, and look at the fall again,
early next morning. It happened, however, that Mattawa, who went down
to the river for water, soon after sunrise, found a Siwash canoe
neatly covered with cedar branches. This was not an astonishing thing,
since the Indians, who come up the rivers in the salmon season, often
hew out a canoe on the spot where they require it, and leave it there
until they have occasion to use it again. After considering the matter
at breakfast, the four men decided to go down the canyon. They knew
that one or two Indians were supposed to have made the hazardous
trip, but that appeared sufficient, for they were all accustomed to
handling a canoe, and an extra hazard or two is not often a great
deterrent to men who have toiled in the Bush.

They had a few misgivings when the hills closed about them as they
slipped into the shadowy entrance of the canyon. No ray of sunlight
ever streamed down there, and the great hollow was dim and cold and
filled with a thin white mist, though a nipping wind flowed through
it. For a mile or two the hillsides, which rose precipitously above
them, were sprinkled here and there with climbing pines, that on their
far summits cut, faintly green, against a little patch of blue.
By-and-by, however, the canoe left these slopes behind, and drifted
into a narrow rift between stupendous walls of rock, though there was
a narrow strip of shingle strewn with whitened driftwood between the
side of the canyon and the river. Then this disappeared, and there was
only the sliding water and the smooth rock, whi